Local Restaurants Donate 1 Meal For Every Meal Bought

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A new Twin Cities charity has a powerful idea that will allow you to feed the hungry both locally and around the world, and all you have to do is have dinner.

Eatiply is a one-for-one concept. You buy a meal at certain restaurants, and another meal is donated to someone who needs it.

Eatiply has been around for just over a month and already more than 6,000 meals have been donated. Their simple solution is to get more people to eat out at the right places.

"We really didn't want the customer to feeling like 'Hey, if I have the fish and chips as opposed to the shepherd's pie, I can donate a meal.'  It's just as easy as picking a restaurant that's supported by Eatiply," Eatiply chief meal giver David Woodbury said.

The concept is incredibly simple.  You go to a participating restaurant and order whatever you want. That restaurant donates money to Eatiply, and then they make sure a charity will feed the hungry.  All you've got to do is order what you want.

It is free for the customer, and therein resides the challenge -- convincing the restaurants to buy in. They're the ones that would donate the money to buy the meals for the less fortunate, but the cost is 39 to 49 cents a meal.

Eatiply bases the price off its food bank partners. Woodbury says Eatiply is "definitely picking up momentum."

"If you think of it as just one person at a time, if you can give the little that we can give, we can make a tremendous difference," Flamingo Restaurant co-owner Shegitu Kebede said.

Flamingo is one of the participating restaurants. Since Eatiply launched at the beginning of 2013, nine restaurants have signed up, including Great Waters Brewing Co., The Anchor Fish and Chips, Trattoria da Vinci, Lone Oak Grill, Aji Contemporary Japanese, Luci Ancora, Ursula's Wine Bar & Café, and French Hen Café.

"It's not all about profit," Anchor co-owner Jenny Crouser said. "We really all feel the success of a place is the success of a community."

New this month, Eatiply has launched an app where you can decide where the meal will go. If you want it to go overseas or stay local, you have the choice.

Eatiply is starting to explore different cities where they can get restaurants to sign up. There are now nine restaurants that have partnered with them.

Woodbury hopes his organization helps to ensure there are no more hungry people in the world.

"If we've run ourselves out of business, we've done our job," he said.